Infantry Earthworks

Samples of the infantry earthworks that ringed Petersburg have been re-created here, reflecting fortifications that one man said made the landscape resemble “an immense prairie dog village.” As the siege wore on, assaults against entrenched positions became rare. Most of the pitched battles at Petersburg took place beyond the flanks of the armies, as the Federals inexorably pushed westward to cut the rail lines and roads into the city. On June 18, 1864, Col. Charles Wainwright, USA, wrote, “Attacking entrenchments has been tried so often and with such fearful losses that even the stupidest private now knows that it cannot succeed, and the natural consequence follows; the men will not try it. The very sight of a bank of earth brings them to a dead halt.”

Virginia · United States